


just have to survive tonight, first

by ASabsStory



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Detectives, Alternate Universe - Human, Alternate Universe - Police, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, Anxiety, Anxiety Attacks, Betrayal, Connor (Detroit: Become Human) Whump, Depression, Hurt No Comfort, Insomnia, Kinda?, Mental Health Issues, Mole - Freeform, No Plot/Plotless, No Slash, Police, Post-Betrayal, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Present Tense, Pretty please, Red Ice (Detroit: Become Human), i know present tense is jarring but that's why i used it, idk please just read it, no romance but it's still about relationships in a way, that red ice task force hank was a part of, you have to piece together the plot by yourself
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-22
Updated: 2019-07-22
Packaged: 2020-07-11 15:01:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,654
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19929988
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ASabsStory/pseuds/ASabsStory
Summary: Connor twists trembling fingers into the bedsheets tangled around his legs. He stares into the depths of the blackness around him, despite the apprehension crawling up the ladder of his spine and slithering across his ribs to curl clawed fingers into his heart. The gradual adjustment of his eyes to the pitch black does little to ease the sense of foreboding; the ability to make out the shapes of his room brings with it a scenario in which he sees the silhouette of someone that was not there when he went to sleep.





	just have to survive tonight, first

**Author's Note:**

> I spend a lot of time obsessing over horrible scenarios and this is the best I can do for myself until I can get back to therapy. However, I put a lot of effort into this and am actually proud of it? Whaddya know. Anywho, the backstory is purposely left ambiguous because it's not really about what happened to Connor, just the aftermath of it. However, if you're interested in exactly what went down, I'll leave that in the end notes! Please enjoy :)

It isn’t the thunder that wakes Connor, and it isn’t what has him frozen in the middle of his bed, breath hitched deep in his lungs to focus on the silence around him. Even as a child, he found the intensity of a summer storm like this to be more soothing than intimidating. A few months ago, this may have still been the case, but it does not pacify him now. The flash of light that illuminates his room, and the deafening crack that follows isn’t the cause of the metallic taste in his mouth. Nor is it the cause of the dizzying lightness pooling like liquid in the base of his throat and evaporating, rising to cloud his mind. Still, the booming thunder and flashes of lightning echo rather than ease sounds of gunfire and images of red blood and Red Ice and betrayal.

Connor twists trembling fingers into the bedsheets tangled around his legs. He stares into the depths of the blackness around him, despite the apprehension crawling up the ladder of his spine and slithering across his ribs to curl clawed fingers into his heart. The gradual adjustment of his eyes to the pitch black does little to ease the sense of foreboding; the ability to make out the shapes of his room brings with it a scenario in which he sees the silhouette of someone that was not there when he went to sleep. Connor wets his lips. The breaths he risks rattle noisily through his lungs and disturb the silence of the room around him, and he holds the air in his lungs for long drags between inhales and exhales to listen to the darkness that encompasses him. He waits for a familiar voice he knows won’t come.

Something clatters in his kitchen, and Connor’s mouth dries enough that when he swallows, it hurts. He slides his hands along his covers, graceful despite his shaking, and feels his way to the wooden bed stand, and then to the metal bat that has rested against it since he was released from the hospital. Connor wraps clammy fingers around the grip and plucks it soundlessly from its perch. He longs for his cell phone, but his therapist had suggested that limiting his technology use before bed might help fight the insomnia, and therefore it sits charging on the kitchen counter. He slips from his bed, and his sheets cascade onto the floor behind him. He pads, barefoot on hardwood, to the door that sits a yard from the end of his bed. When he extends his palm to feel for the exit, he finds nothing but open air where his door had been closed and locked when he turned off the light mere hours later. The light switch rests temptingly on the wall beside him, but Connor doesn’t know what caused the noise in his kitchen. If there’s someone there, it might be safer to hide in his room, not confront her or alert her that he is awake. No; Connor leaves the lights off and sneaks sideways down the short hallway, baseball bat raised over his shoulder and back against the wall. He avoids the creaky floorboard in front of the bathroom door and stops just before he emerges into the main living space. It’s defined by a couch, side table, coffee table, television, hand-me-down rug from Hank’s house, and a small kitchen. Connor does not own a dining table; he does not have guests, and he eats on the couch. The sliding door that leads to his small balcony four stories up is ajar, and rainwater is soaking his rug where it pours into the apartment.

The gun that sits locked in a safe by the couch calls to him, and Connor wishes he’d ignored his therapist’s request that he stop sleeping with it loaded under his pillow. Markus wants to help; it’s his job to help, but Connor can tell he has a difficult time counseling him. Connor can never recall the specifics of the emotions gripping him after the moment has passed. He remembers that it’s intense, overwhelming, all-encompassing, but it feels detached and surreal when he’s come down. He’s fine when he isn’t this way—normal, even. He’s a high-functioning member of society and even he can’t reconcile the trembling, fearful man hiding in his closet all night with a gun with Detroit’s best and brightest homicide detective. Because right now, that detective feels like a stranger, and Connor feels like he’s dying. He can’t imagine having ever not felt this way, because the lightheadedness and the urge to break down into tears and the anxiety clawing its way out through his sternum leave no room for the possibility that the sensation will ever pass. Markus wants him to write down what he feels as it’s happening, but when Connor tried his hands were shaking too much for the writing to be legible. He was so ashamed the morning after that he threw the paper out. He’s always ashamed the morning after, when he sees the bags under his eyes and the tear tracks etched red into his cheeks.

Connor squints through the putrid, yellow light coming from the street outside, but he can see that his front door is still locked from the inside, which means that the intruder didn’t come in from that way. How they managed to reach his balcony this high up is beyond him, and he’s nearly tempted to commend them on their dedication, if it weren’t for the doubt in the back of his mind. Is he imagining this? Did he, exhausted after difficult cases and several nights without sleep, simply forget to close and lock his balcony door? He always locked his door, was never so careless as to forget, but Connor had been making uncharacteristic decisions for several months now, ever since her. Connor had told Markus once that he was considering moving somewhere safer, but Markus had told Connor that he wouldn’t feel safer somewhere else. Markus is right, of course, but it doesn’t smother the itch to run.

Connor doesn’t see anyone in the apartment, so he steps out from the shelter of the hallway and into the open floor of the living room, meaning to head for where his phone is fully charged and plugged in on the counter by the coffeemaker. He wants to call Markus, or maybe Hank, but the idea that maybe he can’t trust them when he’s this vulnerable pops into his head. He’ll hate himself in the morning for questioning their loyalty, but he’d never questioned Amanda’s loyalty either, and look where it had put him. Calling them would be the equivalent of rolling over and exposing the delicate flesh of his throat; it meant blindly laying bare every weakness he harbored and opening himself to the possibility that he’d be played for a fool and left for dead all over again. A thought in the back of his mind tells him that Hank has saved his life a multitude of times over their months of partnership, that Hank has invited him into his life and become as close as family, has talked to Connor about _his_ problems. Amanda never did that. Another thought reminds him that this could all be a carefully constructed trick meant to deceive Connor into trusting another mole. This is life or death, and Connor can’t take any chances, not even with Hank Anderson. So, Connor doesn’t call Hank. He steps out into the living room, knuckles white from their grip on the bat. He freezes.

Over his right shoulder, pressed against the wall behind him to remain obscured from view from the hallway, Connor hears heavy breathing. He draws a shuddering breath of his own, eyes squeezing shut to steady himself. He exhales, and whips around, swinging the bat. It swishes through empty air, and the crack of lightening that illuminates the sky reveals that there is no one there. When he approaches the balcony door, there are no wet footprints on the floor, like there surely would be if someone had broken in tonight. It’s been raining for hours.

But what if he’s wrong? What if they’d wiped up the footprints? Connor hadn’t left his bedroom door open. He needed to check the linen closet to see if all the towels were still there. If Amanda had come back for him—

‘You’re being unreasonable,’ Connor tells himself. There’s no one in the apartment, nothing has been moved, and there is no evidence of a break in. The apartment is too high up to be accessed by the balcony, and there are no footprints. That doesn’t stop him from spinning the combination into his safe and yanking it open to retrieve his gun, nor does it stop him from turning his couch around, so it faces both the balcony door and the front door. It doesn’t stop him from perching on the back of the couch, pistol in hand, where he can reach either exit quickly if he runs fast enough, or where he can leap behind the furniture for cover if she comes in firing.

In the morning, his neighbor will make a passive-aggressive comment about rearranging furniture in the middle of the night, and Connor will apologize. Hank will glare disapprovingly at the dark, purple splotches stained permanently beneath his eyes, and Connor will pretend that he hasn’t slept only two hours in the past three days. When he sees Markus tomorrow night, he’ll tell him that he’s fine now, and Markus will tell him that he won’t make progress if he doesn’t start being honest with the both of them. He’ll suggest that Connor call him or Hank if he goes through this again, and Connor will tell him he will, and then go home to another solitary night of his own, personal Hell.

Connor just has to survive tonight, first.

**Author's Note:**

> In this universe, Connor moves to Detroit from a smaller, suburban town with huge prospects ahead of him. He's promising, and quickly becomes the city's best detective. He's placed on Detroit's Red Ice Task Force, the same one Hank is on, and is partnered with Amanda Stern. Connor and Amanda click and immediately become the department's most efficient detectives. As they get closer to taking down a massive drug ring, run by the notorious Elijah Kamski, they end up in a drug bust gone wrong, in which Connor discovers that someone leaked that the police were coming. Connor and Amanda are put in charge of finding the mole, and Connor discovers during a later bust that it's Amanda herself that's the traitor. She fires on Connor and several other members of the squad, and Connor nearly dies. He spends weeks in recovery, and develops PTSD, anxiety and depression in the aftermath. Markus is the therapist that Captain Fowler wanted Connor to start seeing, and Hank is assigned as Connor's new partner. They've been working together for nearly a year when this story takes place, but Connor struggles to place his trust in Hank after he placed so much trust in Amanda and nearly lost his life for it. Hank worries about Connor, but doesn't push him.


End file.
